Oh. I got up this morning, feeling more physically and mentally able. This was good. I was in the car by 7:00 a.m. I was not even thinking (ok so I was) about not stopping to pray. The object this morning was the light that I wanted on the fields in the center of the Tree Place. An hour of sensory-filled shooting. Ignoring a common malfunction of the camera. Suddenly, a new glitch. I frowned at it, couldn’t get it to go off, so, I pulled out the battery pack to reset it per usual. The camera didn’t tell me no. I took some more shots the ‘normal’ way and then the odd error again. Ut oh! I thought to take out the smaller camera, the one that has served me ever so faithfully and well since 2006. I grabbed a few shots with it and noted it’s own increasing set of malfunctions. I just smiled at it. It was a camera known for the board going in the first six months, mine was only doing it now. I did have a wince of panic at the possibility of losing both cameras at once. Well, I can’t change it. The large camera was just handed over to me, so I’m not out anything but my method of talking back to my Muse. I’ll patiently await discovery of what might ail it. Off to Walmart to see if a simple set of new batteries might take care of the problem. The larger camera didn’t put one file onto the card, not even when the top stated that it was functioning. I did get a few shots from the smaller. It was, and still is, a very pretty morning here. I’m really glad to have had the urge matched with ability to get there.
patience
Morning Trip (75)
“There it is; the light across the water. Your story. Mine. His. It has to be seen to be believed. And it has to be heard. In the endless babble of narrative, in spite of the daily noise, the story waits to be heard.
Some people say that the best stories have no words. It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case always the wrong size to fit in the template called language.”
– Jeanette Winterson
Gratitude for When God Says NO!!
When I began to sprout this blog, I was making chicken salad for lunch and was greatly pleased with my ability to cook with what I’ve got at times when money is uhm tight. I’ll call it tight. How I got a bowl of salad and a few plates of food with the ingredients that I had, I really cannot say. It’s also delicious and a menu item from a place where I helped to do catering cooking.
An image I took when I was visiting the Tree Place just prior to the main flooding when I was confused as to why the road was closed to the bridge in Montoursville.
Montoursville Bridge Prior to Flooding Crest--elisabeth connelley
I’ve been debating putting up images of raging flood waters from the recent flooding in my area, especially since the Tree Place was involved. I do not like GIANT focus on disaster and devastation. While being very glad not to have been primarily affected in my home, those all around me within a mile or two were being evacuated. I have been greatly puzzled as, well I haven’t been in this area during such a flood event in the past. The one year was bad, I recall, but I didn’t have a car so, I could not see and comprehend the losses. It can even be physically impossible to see outside of one’s box, go figure! All of the roads around here, to my knowledge are not yet opened. Many bridges and entire highway surfaces simply torn away. It is difficult to imagine such power!
The first lesson that encouraged me to post today came from a thought that a friend passed to me and asked me to consider as I learned to understand, utilize, and modulate my own energies and anger. To keep the lesson short, I used to LOVE to throw things, the heavier the better. I worked backwards from furniture to rocks, glass to eggs and so on and so forth. On my insides I’d still throw things. He said, “Rocks are hard, water is patient.”
It took me a very long time to see and to witness what this meant. It’s a work in progress. The slow and steady working away of stone, by the smallest of drips. I used this teaching to learn to bend and not to break. I used this feeling to let things wash over and through me. Inside, I must admit I would have loved the ability to grind things and people with it, to wash them away, to make all in my own perception–clean. I do not think that with my hand feeling water current rushing by in cool clear water that I really ever did understand the power in water.
Here is the cute little house, that I could not really understand why no one resided in it, and hoped to be able to offer the farmer what would be a lower rent, knowing the small stream nearby might flood up onto the porch from time to time. I am glad I was not granted my fervent wish.
Caption and Source: MARK NANCE/Sun-Gazette
A farm between Williamsport and Montoursville is inudated with floodwaters Thursday morning.
It is the red house with the white-edged roof, next to the white building with red roof, up near the portion of road still able to be seen. I am not a flood victim today, because God said NO.
Here is an image that shows a potential outcome of such power, though I somehow imagine, not it’s upper limit of ability.
Caption and Source: MARK NANCE/Sun-Gazette
Route 973 now ends abruptly at the Slabtown Bridge, where a raging Loyalsock Creek has washed away the roadway and part of the bridge.
I think somehow inside that I equated patient with softness, lack of damage, lack of reaction. This is NOT true. Now, to know what I need to do with this. Who knows if I even yet comprehend the entire lesson.
Sitting on a Shelf a New Inside Upside Down and Backward Blog, who knows what number today!
What is it like to be sitting on a shelf? Ok, so I really do NOT want to know that. I like to be in action! In front! Flaming! Splashing! Primal! Did you know that you can be all of those things sitting silent??!? Ok, I’ve gone off onto a think….
I’m posting to say that for the third time now, my computer has a virus. This time, the computer is sitting on a shelf at the repair place, as the repair guy has many helpful contracts and duties and is over-run by storm damage to repair, doctor’s office computers virused and locking in all patients’ ever important information by a virusbook (I mean facebook i swear) virus from a surfing at work employee!! I am a little bit more glad to be simply sitting on that shelf, than to be one of those patients! Well, the way that I write and create has a lot to do with what I am near and what I have at hand to utilize for material. While I LOVE LOVE LOVE the library at the college soooo, it is cold steel, mortar, and very bright lights that trigger neurological events–unpleasant ones. So, I wait…I am very careful NOT to be patient nor to ask for patience. I hiss at those uttering such words at me and have them quickly flush the words down the nearest toilet or garbage disposal orifice! WAITING is acceptable, patience brings to me the MOST horrid of demons! YIKES! So, I’m waiting and not writing. I am not yet comfy with not having access to my access, but I’m not yet ripping off my skin in horror! Progress not perfection! See you all again when the computer is fixed!
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO no no no, now I’ve got an association!!! Watching those strings appear to tangle and then become a long ‘straight’ strand……oooo oooooooooo ooooooooo. Tossing a yoyo at Kathy!
Morning Trip (16)
“I’ve said before that every craftsman
searches for what’s not there
to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten hole
where the roof caved in. A water-carrier
picks the empty pot. A carpenter
stops at the house with no door.
Workers rush toward some hint
of emptiness, which they then
start to fill. Their hope, though,
is for emptiness, so don’t think
you must avoid it. It contains
what you need!
Dear soul, if you were not friends
with the vast nothing inside,
why would you always be casting you net
into it, and waiting so patiently?
This invisible ocean has given you such abundance,
but still you call it “death”,
that which provides you sustenance and work.
God has allowed some magical reversal to occur,
so that you see the scorpion pit
as an object of desire,
and all the beautiful expanse around it,
as dangerous and swarming with snakes.
This is how strange your fear of death
and emptiness is, and how perverse
the attachment to what you want.
Now that you’ve heard me
on your misapprehensions, dear friend,
listen to Attar’s story on the same subject.
He strung the pearls of this
about King Mahmud, how among the spoils
of his Indian campaign there was a Hindu boy,
whom he adopted as a son. He educated
and provided royally for the boy
and later made him vice-regent, seated
on a gold throne beside himself.
One day he found the young man weeping..
“Why are you crying? You’re the companion
of an emperor! The entire nation is ranged out
before you like stars that you can command!”
The young man replied, “I am remembering
my mother and father, and how they
scared me as a child with threats of you!
‘Uh-oh, he’s headed for King Mahmud’s court!
Nothing could be more hellish!’ Where are they now
when they should see me sitting here?”
This incident is about your fear of changing.
You are the Hindu boy. Mahmud, which means
Praise to the End, is the spirit’s
poverty or emptiness.
The mother and father are your attachment
to beliefs and blood ties
and desires and comforting habits.
Don’t listen to them!
They seem to protect
but they imprison.
They are your worst enemies.
They make you afraid
of living in emptiness.
Some day you’ll weep tears of delight in that court,
remembering your mistaken parents!
Know that your body nurtures the spirit,
helps it grow, and gives it wrong advise.
The body becomes, eventually, like a vest
of chain mail in peaceful years,
too hot in summer and too cold in winter.
But the body’s desires, in another way, are like
an unpredictable associate, whom you must be
patient with. And that companion is helpful,
because patience expands your capacity
to love and feel peace.
The patience of a rose close to a thorn
keeps it fragrant. It’s patience that gives milk
to the male camel still nursing in its third year,
and patience is what the prophets show to us.
The beauty of careful sewing on a shirt
is the patience it contains.
Friendship and loyalty have patience
as the strength of their connection.
Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates
that you haven’t been patient.
Be with those who mix with God
as honey blends with milk, and say,
“Anything that comes and goes,
rises and sets, is not
what I love.” else you’ll be like a caravan fire left
to flare itself out alone beside the road.”
Rumi VI (1369-1420) from ‘Rumi : One-Handed Basket Weaving
Morning Trip (7)
“I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by Thy side.
The works that I have in hand
I will finish afterwards.
Away from the sight of Thy face
My heart knows no rest or respite,
And my work becomes an endless toil
In a shoreless sea of toil.
Today the summer has come at my window
With its sighs and murmurs,
And the bees are plying their minstrelsy
At the court of the flowering grove.
Now it is time to sit quiet
Face to face with Thee,
And to sing dedication of life
In this silent and overflowing leisure.”
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Elisa's Spot 